by Mrs. Thrale, Dr. Johnson’s friend; by Mrs. Hunter, the wife of the great anatomist; by the worthy Mrs. Barbauld; and by the excellent Mrs. Hannah More.  Here is Miss Anna Seward, ‘called by her admirers “the Swan of Lichfield,"’ who was so angry with Dr. Darwin for plagiarising some of her verses; Lady Anne Barnard, whose Auld Robin Gray was described by Sir Walter Scott as ’worth all the dialogues Corydon and Phyllis have together spoken from the days of Theocritus downwards’; Jean Glover, a Scottish weaver’s daughter, who ’married a strolling player and became the best singer and actor of his troop’; Joanna Baillie, whose tedious dramas thrilled our grandfathers; Mrs. Tighe, whose Psyche was very much admired by Keats in his youthful days; Frances Kemble, Mrs. Siddons’s niece; poor L. E. L., whom Disraeli described as ’the personification of Brompton, pink satin dress, white satin shoes, red cheeks, snub nose, and her hair a la Sappho’; the two beautiful sisters, Lady Dufferin and Mrs. Norton; Emily Bronte, whose poems are instinct with tragic power and quite terrible in their bitter intensity of passion, the fierce fire of feeling seeming almost to consume the raiment of form; Eliza Cook, a kindly, vulgar writer; George Eliot, whose poetry is too abstract, and lacks all rhythmical life; Mrs. Carlyle, who wrote much better poetry than her husband, though this is hardly high praise; and Mrs. Browning, the first really great poetess in our literature.  Nor are contemporary writers forgotten.  Christina Rossetti, some of whose poems are quite priceless in their beauty; Mrs. Augusta Webster, Mrs. Hamilton King, Miss Mary Robinson, Mrs. Craik; Jean Ingelow, whose sonnet on An Ancient Chess King is like an exquisitely carved gem; Mrs. Pfeiffer; Miss May Probyn, a poetess with the true lyrical impulse of song, whose work is as delicate as it is delightful; Mrs. Nesbit, a very pure and perfect artist; Miss Rosa Mulholland, Miss Katharine Tynan, Lady Charlotte Elliot, and many other well-known writers, are duly and adequately represented.  On the whole, Mrs. Sharp’s collection is very pleasant reading indeed, and the extracts given from the works of living poetesses are extremely remarkable, not merely for their absolute artistic excellence, but also for the light they throw upon the spirit of modern culture.

It is not, however, by any means a complete anthology.  Dame Juliana Berners is possibly too antiquated in style to be suitable to a modern audience.  But where is Anne Askew, who wrote a ballad in Newgate; and where is Queen Elizabeth, whose ‘most sweet and sententious ditty’ on Mary Stuart is so highly praised by Puttenham as an example of ‘Exargasia,’ or The Gorgeous in Literature?  Why is the Countess of Pembroke excluded?  Sidney’s sister should surely have a place in any anthology of English verse.  Where is Sidney’s niece, Lady Mary Wroth, to whom Ben Jonson dedicated The Alchemist?  Where is ’the noble ladie Diana Primrose,’